


Esmeralda

by Lyn_Laine



Series: The Big Six [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Female Harry, Female Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 15:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12368466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyn_Laine/pseuds/Lyn_Laine
Summary: A female Harry tells us the autobiography of her life.  Books centric.





	Esmeralda

Prologue

My name is Esmeralda Lily Potter and the circumstances of my birth are probably the first unusual thing about me. I started right out in a pretty strange world. I was born on 31 July 1980 to James and Lily Potter (née Evans), a witch and wizard and two original members of the Order of the Phoenix, at the height of the First Blood War, only hours after my classmate-to-be Neville Longbottom.

My parents had gone into hiding in late 1979 after they discovered my mother was pregnant. From the beginning, their first priority was keeping me safe. I know from later information that when I was born, my mother held a christening; it was quiet and quick, with only my parents, myself, and my godfather Sirius Black in attendance. I spent my infancy, a time I don’t remember, in hiding with my parents at the Potter Cottage in the little village of Godric’s Hollow in the West Country, England.

I also know from later information that for my first birthday, Sirius bought me a toy broomstick. It was apparently my favorite present and as I flew around the house with it I smashed a horrible vase that had been a gift from my mother’s Muggle sister Petunia, earning me a scolding mostly on principle from my mother. My parents also hosted a very quiet birthday tea. The only people in attendance were me, my parents, and our witch neighbor Bathilda Bagshot. 

My family apparently owned a cat, but I don’t know what happened to it after Voldemort’s attack.

The problem came that Lord Voldemort, leader of the Dark Side during the Blood Wars, had marked me and my family for death. He’d heard of a prophecy regarding his downfall at the hands of a child of either gender born at the end of July in 1980. There was one further qualification: both parents of the child had to be members of the Order of the Phoenix who had survived battles with Voldemort in them exactly three times. That was all Voldemort knew, that a child with these qualifications might grow to kill him. There were only two potential subjects, therefore - myself, a Halfblood girl, and Neville Longbottom, a Pureblood boy. One would have expected Voldemort to go after Neville first, but for whatever his own personal reasons were (there were rumors circling about that I would somehow grow to seduce him through my feminine wiles, whatever that crock of bull meant), he marked me and my family for death first instead.

Albus Dumbledore, leader of the Light Side and the Order, therefore recommended that my parents begin use of the Fidelius Charm while in hiding. Under the Fidelius Charm, no outsider could find my home unless expressly told of its location by a Secret Keeper. My parents planned to make my godfather Sirius the Secret Keeper, but on his advice, they changed this designation to another friend Peter Pettigrew, who they thought would be less suspicious.

That’s when the second problem came. Unbeknownst to the Order, Pettigrew was actually a spy for Voldemort. Barely a week later, he betrayed my family and our whereabouts. Apparently Voldemort threatened and tortured him and he caved.

On the evening of Hallowe’en in 1981, Lord Voldemort arrived at Godric’s Hollow and murdered my parents. He murdered my father first. My father tried to distract Voldemort so his wife and daughter could get away, but he did not have his wand on him at the time of the attack and was killed almost immediately in the cottage entryway. Voldemort mounted the stairs, knocked down the barricade my mother had built up, and found my mother in my nursery with me in my cot. My mother was killed by Voldemort while trying to shield me from one of his attacks.

Her love for me became a barrier protecting me from any touch of Voldemort’s - including a magical one. Voldemort was essentially a sociopath by this time in his development, had never had a very loving life in the first place, and genuinely did not see this coming. So when he fired the Killing Curse at me, it backfired on the caster and instead of murdering me, Voldemort lost all his powers and his physical form was obliterated. His remaining soul fled far away.

The only reason Voldemort didn’t die that day was because he had already begun building up Horcuxes. He had ripped apart his soul and put it into different meaningful objects to keep himself alive. This was why he no longer even looked human. So far he had five Horcruxes already made at the time he attacked me: a diary of his from his teenage years, the family ring he stole on the night he murdered and destroyed the remaining biological family that had abandoned him, and magical objects found from three of his alma mater Hogwarts School’s founders, namely Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. 

Starting that night, his sixth Horcrux became me, and not even he realized it. A part of his fractured soul broke off unseen in the attack, floating about, and it went into the nearest available opening: the open scar on my forehead where the Killing Curse had bounced off of me. In this transfer, some of his abilities, such as the ability to speak to snakes in Parseltongue, also became mine.

This event made me “The Girl Who Lived” among British wizards and witches, or even international audiences. I was the only person ever to survive the Killing Curse. The failed curse scar shaped like a lightning bolt on my forehead marked me as “Voldemort’s equal”, unbeknownst to most, and it was a mark I would grow up feeling self conscious of. No girl wants her face marred by a scar. It would grow to be a mixed blessing, opening a telepathic link between myself and Lord Voldemort, giving each of us some awareness of the other’s thoughts and presence. This was another part I would not realize for a long time, he was so weak and far away.

Rubeus Hagrid, one of Dumbledore’s assistants, rescued me from the cottage, which was partly destroyed from the explosion of Voldemort’s failed assault. He had been given specific orders by Dumbledore to take me to my Muggle aunt and uncle, Vernon and Petunia Dursley. As Hagrid went to leave, he was intercepted by Sirius, who was in horrible grief and felt guilty that he was the one who had given the advice about Pettigrew. Sirius pleaded with Hagrid to give me to him, as he had been chosen by my parents as my guardian in the event of their deaths. Hagrid refused, saying he was under orders by Dumbledore to take me to my relatives.

Dumbledore had his own reasons for issuing this order. While I was living with my mother’s relatives, her blood protection would continue and extend to my entire home. While I could call the place where my mother’s blood lived “home”, I could not be harmed. However, the Bond of Blood Charm would end either when I turned seventeen or when I stopped calling my mother’s blood “home” - whichever came first. So it was not, keep in mind, that Dumbledore ever thought I would be loved or welcomed with my Muggle relatives, and yes he did know he was disobeying my parents’ direct orders by bringing me to them.

Still, Sirius trusted Dumbledore and reluctantly relented. He gave Hagrid his flying motorbike to take me to Vernon and Petunia Dursley at 4 Privet Drive in a Surrey city suburb. Instead, Sirius left to find Pettigrew. Peter Pettigrew would go on to fake his own death and frame Sirius for his murder, as well as for the murder of twelve Muggles. He “died” a hero and Sirius was sent to prison in Azkaban, when really it should have been the other way around.

Hagrid delivered me to Dumbledore at Privet Drive on the evening of 1 November 1981. I was only a single year old. Dumbledore left me in the night with a letter of explanation for the Dursleys to find on their doorstep the next morning. However, they never relayed this letter of explanation to me. Instead, I spent the next decade of my life in their strict and miserable Muggle suburban home without knowing that I was a witch - indeed, without knowing that magic existed at all.

As my aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, were Muggles, they had no understanding of magic, and even though my aunt and uncle knew about my lineage, they wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. The Dursleys proudly considered themselves a “normal” family and despised anything out of the ordinary. They lied to me about my parents’ deaths, claiming they died in a car crash. My aunt and uncle forbade me from asking any questions, particularly those regarding my parents. They refused to hang or show pictures of my parents, and in general did their best to avoid the subject of my parents altogether.

They also resented me for my magic, which was sporadic but evident. They strongly discouraged any form of imagination. I was never given birthdays. The Dursleys also verbally and emotionally abused me - sometimes depriving me of meals or locking me in the cupboard under the stairs, which doubled as my bedroom - whenever something “unusual” occurred. The way I was treated bordered on physical abuse, but was left unreported to the authorities. This was particularly horrible in retrospect because I couldn’t turn the unusual things off - I did not know I was a witch and was so emotionally abused that I would never have considered myself “special” enough to be magic on my own. Ironically, I learned much later that this most horrible part was also a gift, as it was the reason I did not become an Obscurus, a destructive and demonic being of boiling, overflowing, suppressed pure magic. An Obscurus would have had to actively suppress her magic; instead, mine flowed about as freely as it might have otherwise, though with no overt assistance.

The Dursleys spoiled and pampered their son Dudley and paid almost no attention to me; indeed, what little attention they did pay to me was negative in its entirety. All my clothes were ragged secondhand dresses. I was made to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs while my cousin got two bedrooms to himself (one for sleeping in and one for storing all his countless toys). They also made me do household chores for them, and proper suburban gender roles and etiquette lessons were strictly enforced. In fact, I was only ever given nice clothes one time, and it was to pretend to be the perfect orphan niece at dinner parties for Uncle Vernon’s corporate clients. I sat right alongside his perfect suburban housewife, my Aunt Petunia. I hated these times, but I forced myself to lie and smile coldly during them.

One of my only saving graces was Dudley, ironically, who was taught to protect me and look after me as his sister figure - albeit a defective one. I was never allowed to be openly boyish, but I was the dignified, prim girl in the midst of Dudley’s boisterous group of guy friends, surprisingly capable of bad language and underhanded tactics on par with the rest of them. I could also be much friendlier than I seemed at first. 

Encouraged by these friendships, I showed my creativity in any way I could, usually through baking, French gourmet cooking, and tea brewing. Making food for others was one of the only true hobbies I was allowed by my aunt and uncle - not only openly creative pursuits but sports were forbidden to me. Other modes of creativity were gardening and interior decorating, though because of my aunt and uncle I formed a taste for classical French styles of decorating and for neat English style gardens.

Marge, Vernon’s sister, I was forced to call an aunt even though she was not a blood relative. Marge despised me, showing it blatantly, and I secretly despised her. Marge was a large, loud, heavily drinking, sometimes violent woman with a forceful manner who simultaneously found me spineless and not proper enough. She was a dog breeder and always brought the most miserable, vicious, mean tempered bulldogs around with her to every visit. While I’m characterizing Dursleys, Vernon was a strict, traditionalist, and forcefully opinionated man who despised anything imaginative and different. Petunia was a skinny, anally clean and hygienic woman who always seemed to be trying to scrub some invisible dirt off of her home; she was also a terrible gossip, obsessed with deciding other people’s lives were worse than hers. Dudley was the least objectionable of the lot; he liked boxing, wrestling, and video games but was one of the most terribly spoiled individuals I have ever met.

I also had a babysitter, neighbor and local little old cat lady Mrs Arabella Figg. Unknown to me when I was a child, Mrs Figg was actually a Squib - born to a wizard and witch without magic - placed in the neighborhood by Albus Dumbledore. So he must have been aware of my childhood growing up. To maintain favor with the Dursleys, she was forced to treat me terribly every time she had care of me, as the Dursleys would never have let me near Mrs Figg’s house if they’d known I had fun there. Mrs Figg was not abusive, but she did try to make my time at her house as boring, mundane, cat-obsessed, smelly, and chore-heavy as possible.

Then there were my relationships at school. I attended St Grogory’s Primary School, a Muggle primary school, in the same year as Dudley. I did make school time girl friends there, friends I frequently borrowed fashion magazines from. I particularly loved and daydreamed of the cute, colorful vintage look, but I knew my aunt and uncle would never buy it for me. Secretly, this is why I allowed them to cut off all my hair. It was the closest I felt I would ever come to that kind of style. They didn’t like my messy, tangled black curls when they were long, finding them unruly, so they cut off all my hair and assumed I was simply downtrodden when I let them. 

I had a small and spritely form, a full heart-shaped face, messy black curls in a cute crop around my head, and almond shaped bright green eyes. I knew I could look good with the fashion I loved, but I didn’t think it would ever happen.

I never let any of my school friends over to my home, but outwardly I seemed sociable. Esmeralda Potter was not unpopular in primary school, though my clothes kept me from becoming anything truly remarkable.

I got very good grades in school, both as a defiance against Dursley expectations of women and because I knew that in order to escape my relatives, I needed those grades. My teachers never liked me, however, because “odd” things tended to happen around me.

The story truly starts when I am almost eleven years old - about to finish primary school, and also about to receive my Hogwarts letter for witch magic training, though at the time I knew nothing about my past…


End file.
